[6 Ways] How to Free up Space on Windows 11

Scenario 

Why need to free up space on Windows 11?

As mentioned above, many users have no idea why their computers are running out of space, and they also don’t know how to free up space. Usually, the following conditions may cause the C drive to become full:

✦ There are viruses and malware on your computer that will keep generating files.

✦ You have saved large files to the C: drive. For example, the default download folder is located on the C: drive.

✦ Pages files, temporary files and other files may also take up space on your system partition.

When there’s not enough free space on the C drive of Windows 11, you may receive the warning of low disk space and suffer from system and application running slow. In severe cases, your computer system can even crash completely. Therefore, it is necessary to free up space on Windows 11.

Solved: Free up space on Windows 11

In addition to the quick fixes like emptying the Recycle Bin, you can try the following methods to learn how to free up disk space on Windows 11 in different conditions.

│Run Disk Cleanup

Disk Cleanup is a maintenance utility within Microsoft, which will scan and display the amount of storage space the files have used on your hard drive. You can delete some files that you cannot delete in Windows File Explorer. The following are the detailed steps:

Step 1. Right-click C drive and select "Properties", then click "Disk Cleanup" in the popped window.

Step 2. Select the target files and click "OK" in the Disk Cleanup window.

Note: If you don’t want to select files one by one, you can click "Clean up System Files" to directly delete previous Windows installations (Windows. old folder), system restore points, Recycle Bin, and other system files.

│Delete hibernate file

Hibernate is a magical function in the Windows system, it can save the contents of computer memory to a hard disk and make your computer start up quickly. Windows reserves about half of the RAM space for hibernation files. Therefore, you can disable hibernation to free up disk space on Windows 11 using the steps below without harming your computer:

Step 1. Go to the Start menu, type "cmd" and right-click the Command Prompt, then select Run as administrator.

Step 2. Type "powercfg.exe / hibernate off" and press Enter.

│Enable Storage Sense to free up disk space

Storage Sense is an upgraded disk cleanup function on Windows 11, which can automatically free up space on SSD or HDD through the following steps.

Step 1. Go to the Start menu, and click Settings, System and Storage one by one.

Step 2. Turn on the Storage Sense which is off by default. 

Step 3. Click one disk and select unneeded files to free up the space.

│Uninstall unneeded Applications

You may have installed many rarely used applications that take up a lot of disk space. These apps can be uninstalled when you are running out of space.

Step 1. Press "Window+ R", then type "control" and hit "Enter".

Step 2. Click "Uninstall a Program" in the Control Panel dialogue.

Step 3. Right-click the listed applications you don't need and click "Uninstall".

│Free up space on Windows 11 with App Mover

When you are worried about accidentally losing important data due to a wrong operation, and can’t find a suitable way to free up space on Windows 11, you can turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. This is an all-in-one disk partition management tool, and its App Mover feature allows you to move installed programs/folders to other drives to free up space.

You can download the demo version to see how to free up space on Windows 11.

Step 1. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Demo. Right-click the drive and choose "App Mover".

Step 2. There're 2 options: "App Mover" and "Move Folders". Choose "App Mover".

Step 3. All your partitions will be listed in the window. Choose one partition that you want to move applications from and click "Next".

Step 4. Choose all applications you want to move and select a destination path, then click "Move".

Step 5.  Click "OK" on a popped window to begin the process.

Step 6. Click on "Finish" after the applications have been moved.

Tip: If you want to clean up large files in your computer, you can directly use "Delete Large Files".

│Free up the hard drive by wiping it completely

In addition to the App Mover, you can also free up disk space on Windows 11 with the Wipe Partition feature. It is designed to make a new hard drive without old data on it, because all the data will be completely removed from the partition and has no chance to be recovered. Please follow those steps to free up the hard drive with Gutmann method:

Warning:
✎ Once the data is erased, you cannot retrieve it, so please backup your important data first.
✎ You can also choose Fill sectors with random data, DoD 5220.22-M, and Fill sectors with Zero to wipe the hard drive.

Step 1. Right-click on the target disk, then select "Wipe Hard Drive" in the right toolbar. 

Step 2. Select "Gutmann" and click "OK".

Step 3. Click "Apply" in the top toolbar to commit your operation.

Note: Due to the different storage methods of HDD and SSD, Wipe Hard Drive has a negative impact on the life of SSD. So if you want to erase your SSD permanently, you can try SSD Secure Erase feature.

Further tips: Allocate free space from one drive to another

If the C drive is almost full on Windows 11, but you don’t want to delete data or change the location of data by the above methods, then you can also try to allocate free space to expand the C drive without losing data.

Step 1. Right-click the partition which you want to allocate free space from and select "Allocate Free Space".

Step 2. Type in the size of the free space which you want to add into the destination partition.

Step3. Click "Apply" and "proceed” to complete this operation.

Conclusion

Don’t know the reasons and methods to free up Windows 10 space? In the above tutorial, you have seen the reasons and the most practical ways. However, Windows tools may affect your user experience with some limitations. So as a better choice, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition can help you safely free up space without losing data. By the way, if you need to make Windows 11 run faster, migrating OS to SSD can also help you.

If you want to wipe the data on Windows server and enjoy other advanced features, please turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.